Don't Educate: Sell!

Many people get so fired up about educating the world about their new product that they overlook those who don’t need to be educated and will buy it right now.

Credit stefanocapra / fotolia.com

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I have no idea who said it, but one timeless cliché about selling is that you should pick the low-hanging fruit first. Of course, that's pretty obvious, but not necessarily to everyone.

I heard recently from someone who wanted advice for a friend who is importing bidet seats. Not full-scale, bolted-to-the-floor bidets; bidet seats. The importer had some long advertising copy about why Americans need bidets. Kind of like, "no American knows what a bidet is." I don't know any more about them than you do, but his premise is that, first, he must educate Americans about bidets.

So I Googled “bidet,” and learned two valuable things: first, a bidet seat can be added to most standard toilets without plumbing expense. Second, I learned that he's not the first person trying to sell bidet seats in America.

So what should he probably be doing? Forget educating Americans about bidets. Try to sell the Americans who already know what they are. Get to internet search engines like Google. Pay to get to the top of the list when folks Google “bidet.” Then say as fast as you can that for people who want a bidet, they now can get a bidet seat a lot quicker and cheaper, and they can install it themselves.

Quit educating. Start selling.

To reach Mr. Malmo, hear and read more of his commentaries, or to ask him your own marketing question, http://askmalmo.com.

One great problem with laws and rules and regulations is that in almost all cases, obedience requires oversight. We’re beset with Medicare and Medicaid fraud, not because they’re bad programs, but because there’s inadequate oversight.

And often, the people at whom the law or regulation is aimed simply don’t know it exists. Take one of the most common phrases in advertising: “Save up to 40%.”

The fact is that if you advertise like that to prospects, they all expect to save 40%.

There’s always been a thin line between the definition of a shrewd business policy and an unethical policy.

It’s shrewd business from his perspective if a car salesman doesn’t disclose a problem with the car that he knows exists. Billions of dollars in derivatives were sold: it was a shrewd financial product. Was it unethical that most derivative sellers didn’t explain what customers really were buying? In many cases the sellers didn’t know themselves what they were selling.